Eating nuts reduces your pancreatic cancer risk: Harvard researchers

Snacking on about 30 grams of tree nuts, such as almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews or macadamias, a couple of times a week could reduce your risk of pancreatic cancer, according to a large US study.

More than 75,000 women filled our surveys about their diets and lifestyle, and Harvard researchers found those who regularly ate nuts had a significantly reduced risk of pancreatic cancer.

"This reduction in risk was independent of established or suspected risk factors for pancreatic cancer including age, height, obesity, physical activity, smoking, diabetes and dietary factors," said lead author Dr Ying Bao, from the Harvard Medical School.

The pancreas is a small gland behind the stomach that produces hormones, such as insulin, to control blood sugar.

Professor Ian Olver, CEO of the Cancer Council, told ninemsn that this study purely looked at association, so further studies would need to be done to confirm if a mechanism could be established.

"The next step is to try and figure out what is in the nuts that might have this beneficial effect on pancreatic cancer," he said.

"It could be something very simple — it could be that the sort of people who eat nuts don't eat high fat, high carbohydrate diets or don't drink a lot of alcohol. So their diet is better and it might explain that."

Professor Olver said it's too early to say that just eating nuts will stop you from getting pancreatic cancer.

"It's a very common food stuff, and when people are asked to recall what they ate and how much they ate, they often can't remember clearly and that biases the study," he said.

"They're a fine source of protein but I'm not aware of nuts particularly being positively or negatively associated with other forms of cancer."